Hanging, Swinging Food Videos, in Honor of Léon Foucault

Léon Foucault’s pendulum was an experiment the French physicist devised in the 1850s to provide elegant, visible proof of the Earth’s rotation. Food pendulums, on the other hand, are a solution foodies have devised to provide elegant, visible proof that they have an elite variety of foods in their rotation of kitchen ingredients.

Who wins? Well, you can’t slice up a brass plumbob and lay it on a nice crusty piece of bread, can you? So instead of guiding you through the steps of rigging up a 162-year-old physics experiment in honor of Foucault's 194th birthday, why don’t we take you through this pictorial guide to foods that hang?

But before we get to that, here’s our nifty primer on how to create your own food pendulum:

Find food that’s hanging.

Push it.

Cured Sausages

You can’t claim to be into charcuterie unless your ceilings are dripping with cured salami, prosciutto, lonzino, and bresaola. You hang them so the sausages can adjust to their new skins and so cured meats can dry evenly all over without being attacked by land-bound pests. Some sausages and meats are smoked while hanging as well—two birds, one stone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMtRcganlCw

Provolone Cheese

Certain cheeses, on the other hand, are hung as part of the draining process, as part of the curing or smoking process, or because they’re simply too soft to put on a shelf. The ropes that many, like Provolone, were hung with also made them easier to transport in olden days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXUbyi_DSRo

Chinatown Hanging Ducks

As much a part of the color of any Chinatown as paper lanterns, dog-faced dragons, and burning incense, the glazed ducks that hang from restaurant and butcher-shop windows are up there to dry before they’re stuck in a wood-fired oven and have their fat rendered as the final step in roasting them and turning them into Peking duck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4M6vp3coH0

Aged Beef

Butchers and high-end steakhouses hang up sides of beef in precisely temperature- and humidity-controlled refrigerators to tenderize the meat, dry out the muscles fibers, and promote the growth of certain fungi that help develop that prized aged-beef texture and flavor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4-DET1gpvU

Freshly Killed Game

As any hunter knows, you’ve got to dress your animal as soon as you can to cool down the carcass, drain the bodily fluids, tenderize the meat, and develop that distinctive gamey flavor. In the case of larger game like deer, it can mean hanging your venison by the head and letting it sit out for weeks in a cool area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K64xixLYuH8

Bear Bag

Any American or Canadian camper knows that the most important precaution to take before settling into your tent for the night is to gather your food into a bag or special bear-proof container and hang it high up from a long, sturdy tree branch that’s far away from your campsite. Because though didn’t have a choice about inviting your brother-in-law out for the weekend, no one said you had to invite hungry bears too.